


an unexpected gift

by Sasskarian



Series: Home is Where You Are [2]
Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Companionable Snark, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Self-Doubt, and Jaal reveals some interesting things about angaran bioelectricity, and SAM is still an instigator, in which Sara grows as a person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 22:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10581153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasskarian/pseuds/Sasskarian
Summary: Sara hesitated, not wanting to upset his good cheer. But his email this morning--I enjoy you. Even now, I smile picturing your face--had left her with a feeling of guilt beneath the rush of pleasure. There was something weighing heavy on her chest, something she had the gnawing feeling she needed to discuss with him, to clear the air. Before it spiraled out of control.Before she did.Note: now updated!





	

**Author's Note:**

> On my second playthrough, I noticed there was an area in the Voeld Resistance Base I hadn't seen before. The following drabble quickly turned into a sequel for Come to Me.

**Tempest | Tech Lab | Four days after returning from Aya | En route to Havarl**

***

"Hey, Jaal? Are you in— oh!" Sara got a single glimpse of broad shoulders and a curved backside— thankfully clad in his underarmor but  _still_ — before she threw her head back and firmly fixed her eyes on the ceiling of the tech lab.  _Think about water. Cold water,_ _even_ _. Ice. Snow. Anything but the way that fabric clings._

"Sorry!" She squeaked, face hot, trying to think about anything other than the entirely-too-attractive alien doing push-ups at her feet. "I didn't mean to, uh, to interrupt! Or— or anything."

"What are you talking about?" Jaal sounded a little winded but amused. She chanced another quick glance down and almost whimpered as the muscles in his shoulders rippled.  _Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that’s not even decent._

"I interrupted— I barged in on you," she stammered. "I was just— I wanted to— I thought I'd see— Christ, I'm bad at this."

"Yes, you are." He chuckled lowly, and she heard him getting up from the floor; a moment later, his hands cupped her neck and gently brought her gaze back down to fix on his. She couldn’t help but smile at his expression; since they'd returned from Voeld— and rescuing Moshae Sjefa— he had been far more open with her. Even a bit... indulgent.

"You do not need to apologize for entering my space," he murmured, thumb stroking the side of her neck. She shivered at the tell-tale static of him brushing over her skin. He was talking about the night after the kett base, she had a feeling. That was when things had seemed to change. Their eyes would meet across the cargo bay, or she'd come in from the bridge to find him looking at her with a little half-smile she was nervous to put meaning to. It had become a pleasant distraction from the email piling up and the voices of Heleus asking for her attention.

"I don't want to stomp on your toes," Sara said, remembering how she'd annoyed him when he first moved on to the Tempest. "You know, again."

"You are welcome to stomp on whatever pleases you." Jaal laughed with the easy confidence of a man who still didn't grasp some human idioms. Sara snorted under her breath, thinking of some of the more risqué clubs she'd snuck into on the Citadel. She doubted he'd say that if he had the same experience. "Now, what did you need me for?"

Sara hesitated, not wanting to upset his good cheer. But his email this morning—  _I enjoy you. Even now, I smile picturing your face_ — had left her with a feeling of guilt beneath the rush of pleasure. There was something weighing heavy on her chest, something she had the gnawing feeling she needed to discuss with him, to clear the air. Before it spiraled out of control.

Before she did.

"I'm not... very good at not knowing things," she began, her fingers twisting nervously around each other. "That's why I became a peacekeeper in the first place, protecting Prothean digs. Mysteries drive me crazy."

"Yes," he murmured again, a pleased smile crossing his lips. "This I have seen. You hunt for knowledge. Discovery. Not to take but to understand."

She nodded, wanting both to step forward into his embrace, and back to safety. He'd been with her inside the ice world's vault, full of fond exasperation at how often she'd had SAM record something for later research.

"I love to know things. And if I know that there's something I don't know…" Sara sighed and took a half step back, trying to get her bearings. His touch scrambled her senses. "I can push where I'm not wanted. Or welcomed. You've seen it. I did it to you." She blew out a breath, wrapping her ponytail around her hand and pulling. This wouldn't be half as difficult if she hadn't fallen asleep on his lap last week, she thought. If she hadn’t realized she was attracted to him.

If he hadn’t started flirting right back.

"Back on Voeld, I got turned around and went to the upper level of the base looking for Commander Do Xeel. Do you remember?"

Jaal nodded, letting his hands fall to his sides.

"I met... that priestess. And I just, I need to know—" Sara stopped and sighed, dropping onto one of the crates by the wall. By leaving him towering above her, she was putting herself in a subordinate position— and they both knew it. Angara were very sensitive to body language, and her alien civ classes had given her an awareness of how expressive it could be.

Being vulnerable wasn’t something she was comfortable with; it was easier to keep talking if she focused her eyes on the floor near his feet, especially when he simply listened.

"You said that the Angara there were worshipping in private. Because the kett don't allow them to practice their religion." The priestess' face floated up from her memory, all proud lines and softly glowing skin. "I was already talking to her when you found me, and she had offered me a blessing."

Jaal inhaled and she had to swallow past the lump in her throat before she could continue. "I need to know it doesn't bother you that I didn't reject her." She’d been following the writing on the wall— literally—, something scratching at her mind. There was a link there, buried somewhere barely out of reach, and she’d been studying the Angaran language as she wandered, talking to SAM.

His face had been livid when he'd found her in there, and she knew why: It was a very sacred space, carved out of ice and oppression, and not meant for the shallow perusal of aliens. She'd heard his gasp when she knelt before the priestess, the warm words and slight shiver of bioelectricity flowing over her. There had been something there, carried by the current and gone too fast for her to catch the entire message, a jumble of images and emotions she was still trying to sort out.

"Sara..." Jaal breathed.

* * *

"Sara?" Lexi waved her hand in front of the scanner for the Pathfinder quarters, frowning when it refused to open. "Ryder?"

"The Pathfinder is currently not in her quarters," SAM told her. Lexi rolled her eyes.

"I deserve a raise," she muttered, tapping a message on her datapad:  _Ryder skipped immunization boosters. Again_. "Can you locate her, SAM?"

The AI hesitated, as he'd been doing lately whenever Sara disappeared.

"The Pathfinder is in the tech lab," he finally said.

Lexi's brows climbed upward, the beginning of a smile stretching her lips. "And... would our Angaran liaison also be located in the tech lab, SAM?"

"I do not believe I should answer that, Doctor T'Perro." The AI's voice was almost prim and Lexi had to clamp her mouth shut against the laugh fighting its way up her throat. It hadn't been more than a week since Jaal and Sara had unwittingly spent the night together, but Lexi would have put a decade's savings on them being together. They were beginning to realize what their magnetism meant; Jaal had been finding excuses— each more flimsy than the last— to walk past Ryder or be in the same room. And Sara had taken to including the Angara in the most minute of things, eyes pinned on him every time he spoke.

If they didn't work it out soon, Lexi thought, walking back to the medical lab with a light step, the crew might spontaneously develop cavities from the sweetness of waiting for them to get on with it.

* * *

Sara braced herself for whatever he would say, startled when he reached for her. Jaal dropped to his knees and cupped her face again— something he seemed to like doing a lot of—, his gaze locked on hers.

"You have  _no_  idea what it felt like to see you blessed," he whispered, eyes fierce. "To hear one of _my_ people speaking a prayer for you—"

"You were angry. And I know I'm an intruder," Sara interrupted him with a wince. He jerked backwards, eyes wide, hands sliding from her cheeks. "In your galaxy, your home. In your life. I just wanted to apologize for intruding  _there_. It was over the line and I’m trying to… be better."

Silence fell uneasy between them. A flicker of emotion crossed his face, one she couldn't identify, before he laid his hands back on her shoulders, preventing her from standing with gentle pressure. She knew she could break his hold— he no longer had a height leverage and he had no real grip on her, so all it would take is a jump or a biotic shove.

She didn’t move.

"You forgot the last place you've intruded." Jaal's voice was softer than she'd ever heard it. Sara closed her eyes and waited, afraid she'd done something else, crossed another line. Just over a month as Pathfinder, and she knew that she'd changed irrevocably. The same wide-eyed, naive idealist that had journeyed to Heleus, expecting sunshine and roses, had no place in the Initiative any—

"In my heart," he whispered. She was so busy berating herself, she almost missed it.

"I— what?"  _What?_

"Dearest, you received a great honor," Jaal said, his voice never climbing above a murmur. "One that not even the kett were welcomed with, when they arrived in Heleus." He stroked her cheek with his thumb, his eyes fixed on hers. "I—"

* * *

_"Where did she get off to?” Vetra grumbles, pulling her collar closer. Her eyes trace his rofjinn with blatant envy and he smiles a little to himself; these aliens have been nothing like what he expected, with their idiosyncrasies. A week ago, he might have taken offense at her boldness, but he knows it is the warmth of the clothing she desires, not the status._

_“Are you cold, Vetra?” He asks, struggling to keep his face straight. It’s too much fun to tease them, and has helped ease his discomfort over the past few days. He is sure that Evfra is reading his reports with rolling eyes, but for all their strength when combined, for all their alienness, they’re really just… people._

_“Of course I’m cold, I’m a turian,” she snaps, huffing her breath onto her fingers. “My people don’t do well in the cold. It makes us tired and grumpy.”_

_Jaal looks at his omni-tool, following SAM’s beacon for Ryder as it moved around the map leisurely. He grins over his shoulder at Vetra and asks, “Is that different from normal?”_

_“Oh,_ space _you,” she laughs, kicking some snow at him. Jaal draws his leg back to respond in kind when SAM interrupts, answering Vetra's question._

_“The Pathfinder is above you,” the AI states. Jaal freezes, horror rushing through him. He knows exactly where Ryder has found herself, and he sprays Vetra with snow as he turns and takes off at a dead sprint. After a startled squawk, he looks and is surprised that Vetra is pacing him— that turians might be as agile as an angara had never crossed his mind— despite the ice and her previous complaints._

_“SAM, is she in trouble?” Vetra hissed, skidding on the ice as they hit the raised path for the upper level._

_“No.”_

_“Then— Jaal, what’s wrong?_ Jaal! _”_

_He doesn’t bother answering, instead swinging into the room and slowing only reluctantly through the beds of the wounded. Maisi, behind the bar, gives a pointed look towards the corner; she is angry, his friend, and if he knows her, probably has a hand still on her dagger._

_Ryder is already speaking to the priestess, her face pleasant and respectful; it eases some of the pressure in his heart but not much. He can see Roshwar smile sadly at her, as Ryder gestures to the prayers on the wall. As he draws near, he hears Vetra’s inhaled, “oh, shit,” and his heart pounds in his ears, making it difficult to hear the words exchanged. Ryder’s face falls, her brows drawn down, and she looks at the people resting nearby before back to the wall, her eyes tracing the symbols with too much understanding._

_“I’m a bit of a stranger to your faith,” he hears her say. It’s a polite reminder, proof that in the weeks he’s been with the aliens, Ryder has grown more self-aware of her tendency to cross boundaries meant to be private. Though she hasn’t said no, and Jaal feels the blood rush from his head, unsure if the trembling he feels is fury or terror or something else entirely._

_“A stranger in all things, perhaps,” Roshwar says, not unkindly. “The blessing is offered with simple goodwill.”_

_Ryder is quiet for a moment; he can tell by the way she stiffens that she’s noticed their arrival. She turns to glance at him and Jaal studies what he can see of her face, searching. There is no malice, no mockery. Only what he’s come to expect when Ryder finds something new: a hunger for discovery. Roshwar tilts her head, silently asking again and bringing Sara’s attention back to her._

_“It would be an honor,” Sara finally replies quietly, kneeling by the priestess’ feet. Roshwar smiles again— something he’s seen far too little of, these last months— and raises her hand over the human. Vetra inhales and steps forward as the priestess begins to glow with a soft light, but he shakes his head. This is a true blessing, then, and not just a show of words, which means neither he nor Vetra can interrupt._

_“I give you strength and courage,” Roshwar says, her voice proud. A wave of gentle bioelectricity washes over Ryder, causing some of her hair to stand on end; she gasps softly, and there is something in it that begins to unknot Jaal’s tension. “Yet be clear your heart.”_

Can she feel that? _He looks at her face again, and sees an echo of what the blessing should bring: peace, wonder, and renewal. She stands, weaving, helped to her feet by the priestess, and Vetra hurries to offer her shoulder. Distantly, he hears her scolding Ryder, but his mind isn’t listening._

_Every time he closes his eyes that day on Voeld, he sees Sara bathed in the light of the blessing, and feels his heart quake._

* * *

“It is—” Jaal struggled visibly to find language to express himself, a change from his usual eloquence. “The blessing is a private thing. An Angaran thing.”

“I know,” Sara said. She turned her face from his, looking out towards the research room with rounded shoulders. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. I was just wandering and…” She took a deep breath. “No, that’s an excuse. I  _was_  wandering, but once I realized how sacred that area was, I should have wandered back off and left it alone.”

His fingers closed on hers, warm, tugging her to her feet, and then closer. The slightest pressure brought her eyes back to his and, this close to him, a faint scent— something a little sweet and a little smoky— rose from his skin. Her heart skipped a beat as he pressed her gently— always gently, always slow and non-threatening— against the wall of the tech lab.

It didn’t escape her that he’d left enough room to get away, if she wanted.

“You felt the blessing, didn’t you?” Jaal asked, quiet and solemn, and it's as though he is asking another question under his words.

“I felt something. Like static. I assumed it was bioelectricity,” Sara agreed. “Lexi said that you’d told her Angara use it to communicate sometimes. There was something in it but I didn't get all of it.”

He nodded, his fingers threading through her own.   
  
“Sara,” he breathed, brushing his forehead against hers. Where their skin met, it  _ sparked _ , and she shivered, swaying against him. His question echoed in her bones, even as he struggled for words. “I would like… May I…?”   
  
“Yes,” she answered, her nerves jangling. Jaal's lips curled up in a smile and Sara had just enough time to think  _ I’m in so much trouble _ before he cupped her cheek. Bright blue eyes pinned her to the spot, open and fixed on hers, as he carefully tilted his head and brought their mouths together.   
  
The kiss was gentle, and a little awkward, and before her eyes fluttered shut, Sara saw a faint glow spreading where her hands rested against his neck. Under her fingers, his pulse thrummed like a caged bird and her fingers began to tingle with the slightest pull of an electric current. Jaal hummed against her and Sara would swear to the stars and any divine being looking down on them that she felt the change in his electricity as the kiss went somewhere beyond what he'd intended.

* * *

"I am happy to alert you when the Pathfinder returns." SAM's tone should reasonably stay the same, being an AI, but Lexi could swear on a stack of Athame's teachings that there was a hint of irritation in that voice. For posterity, she flicked her stylus against the "failed" box under Ryder's vaccine schedule and turned, unable to keep the grin off her face. Everything was just for the record, of course. She wasn't spying. Not at all.

"Yes, please," Lexi murmured, pleased with herself. "I'm sure I'll have some questions for her before we get to our next destination."

* * *

Her brain scrambled to interpret his signals, thrusting a cacophony of information at her— _a sweet summer breeze, heavy with the scent of fruit and growing things; sunlight and her mother’s gentle smile, the one she only ever gave her father; the first rain of the season, warm and heavy on the breeze, soaking deep into the ground; rich, dark soil squishing delightfully around her toes and the early, glowing shoots of plants; a song she’s heard before, settling into her bones and sounding of home; home;_ home—  
  
Sara gasped against his mouth, eyes gone blind to everything but him. He rumbles, a soft, somehow-sensual vibration from his chest into hers, and between one breath and the next, Jaal pressed her further against the wall, the crackling gap between them closed and _right_. 

One of his thighs ends up between hers and her fingers splay across the fringe of muscle running down the back of his head, that sparking trail following her caress. Under his lips, her mouth opened in invitation and when the taste of him flooded her senses— electric, intoxicating,  _ needed _ —, her nails scrape at his skin. Sweet and tingling, his tongue stroked across hers and her knees gave out, leaving him the only thing keeping her upright.   
  
— _ raspberries and lemons dance on her tongue, sweet and tangy; Scott chokes on his first and only shot of ryncol, laughing that he’ll never take a sucker bet from a krogan again. His mother smiles, the glow in her hand spreading love and comfort; warm water and soft sand and plants so bright, so colorful, they are burned into his mind; hope racing through him as he studies the sleek, dangerous lines of the gorgeous alien ship; a hand— small, many-fingered, warm— thrust into his field of vision; the same hand grasps his, holding with a strength that surprises and warms him; her face, vulnerable and trusting, relaxed in sleep; she _ moans  _ into his mouth, temptress, his name buried somewhere in the sound and he drinks it down, greedy for more— _ __  
  
They both tremble when he pulled away.   
  
“Is that… wow,” Sara murmured, touching her slightly swollen lips. The taste of him is still strong and heady on them.   
  
Jaal chuckled, the glow slowly fading from his skin as he studies her. “I have,” he confided, his thumb stroking the corner of her mouth, “wanted to do that since we returned from Voeld.”   
  
“Oh.” Heat rushed into her cheeks as awareness began to return. Jaal is warm, warm enough she can still feel the heat seeping across the space between them, and there’s still a slight crackle of static dancing through her nerves.  _ Remember how to breathe, Sara, _ she chided herself, leaning back against the wall and studying her pleased-with-himself alien. “Is that how Angara kiss? You can… share memories?”   
  
“That was an unexpected gift,” Jaal admitted, his fingers dropping to the pulse in her throat. Embarrassingly, Sara felt her head tilt back, exposing her neck, without entirely consulting her brain, and she bit down on another moan at the flare of current.  __ Something whispered through her, sending a zing from her throat to her toes, and the sight of Jaal's slow, pleased smile broke over her in a wave that  hovered between amazement and familiarity. “I did not think you would be so sensitive to my current. But yes, that can happen when Angara kiss.”

“It was really something else.” Sara smiled, half-embarrassed, trying to remember the last time a single kiss reduced her to a quivering pile of jelly-kneed idiot. “I saw— felt?— some pretty incredible things.” 

“Yes.” Jaal smirked, pulling back further to let her breathe. If he noticed the tremble still running through her, Sara thanked the stars that he was kind enough not to say anything— she didn't think she could handle being ribbed right now. Every nerve in her body was electrified, raw and exposed, and the desire to take the connection between them somewhere it's not ready to go was as strong as her gratitude that Jaal broke eye contact first, turning and sliding his  _rofjinn_  on.

This…  _thing_  between them felt delicate, like a child’s blown bubble: fragile, ephemeral, and too easy to shatter it by moving too fast.

* * *

“Pathfinder, we will be orbiting Havarl by midday.” SAM’s voice cut through the room, startling them both. Sara stood, grateful for the interruption: even though Jaal was slated for the ground team, Havarl being his home planet, some time to breathe after their tentative exploration of each other would be  _fantastic_ _._  He'd touched nothing but her face and neck, spoke no undue, impossible promises— and still, Sara trembled to feel his gaze land on her. 

“Thanks, SAM.” She turned to Jaal to find his hand already outstretched, palm up and waiting. A warm, wide smile lit up his face when she slipped her fingers briefly into his; his face glowed faintly still, and the heart-stopping heat in his eyes did absolutely nothing to calm the thudding of her heart. “Duty calls.”

“So it does,” he said and she could almost feel every caress of his hungry gaze even as she fumbled with the door scanner. “I’ll see you in a while.”

Sara knew the smile on her face was all but incriminating, but it refused to dissipate, even when she walked right into Vetra with a dull clang. 

"You seem happy," Vetra said, her brow plates raised as high as possible. There was something smug and  _knowing_ about the way Vetra's mandibles flicked outward as Sara mumbled some excuse or other as she backed away and dashed for the ladder.

 _You have two strike team reports to read, Sara_ , SAM said on their private channel, his voice suspiciously neutral.  _And Doctor T’Perro has been by your quarters twice now to look for you._

“Yeah. I skipped my next round of shots.” She gripped the ladder, leaning her overheating skin against it and sighing. Every time she closed her eyes, some vivid piece of the last hours would float to the top of her mind, leaving that flush of want and electricity heavy and warm against her heart. SAM hummed and, for a moment, something not quite a sensation but not quite nothing ran through her. SAM had told her once that her father had described it as an itch that wasn't really there, and that's as good a description as any she could come up with. Some days, the place where Sara ends and SAM begins blurs into nonexistence.

That didn't bother her as much as it once did.

“Perhaps this information sharing via bioelectricity should be brought to Doctor T’Perro’s attention. She is likely unaware that it can involve memories.”

“That had better be one of your failed humor subroutines,” Sara said, her head snapping up and an adrenaline rush of fear-embarrassment-denial flooding her. “Lexi does  _not_  need to know what just happened.”

“On the contrary, Pathfinder,” SAM replied, a very human note of self-satisfaction in his voice. “I believe she would find it invaluable in her research on the Angara.”

“I will  _dismantle you,_ ” she hissed as the door to her quarters opened. “I will manually wipe that half-hour from your matrices if you even—”

SAM's laughter startled her into silence. If anyone had told her that an artificial intelligence created by her father and shoehorned into her head while she was clinically dead would somehow straggle the line between friend and appliance, she'd have dismissed them. But the longer SAM resides in her head, the more Sara knows the truth of him:  _I am fully sentient. Far beyond what even the Initiative understands._  Other programs that had used humor routines sounded chillingly false, approaching a sort of verbal Uncanny Valley, but SAM's laugh warmed her.

“You  _are_  Alec Ryder’s daughter,” SAM said and Sara debated whether she imagined the fondness in his electronic voice or not before she firmly decided it didn't really matter. She and SAM were partners, friends, and whether he was comprised of DNA or lines of code didn't make him any less real. “He also used metaphorical threats when building me. Usually when a line of code evolved in ways that surprised him.”

“Well.” She sighed, waving to Lexi as she poked her head out of the med bay with a very motherly glare. “You  _are_  a bit of a sassy handful."

"So are you, Pathfinder," SAM reminded her, and Sara definitely didn't imagine the warmth in that reply. "So are you."

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a bit dialogue heavy, but I love the idea of their romance growing as Sara becomes more self-aware and less apt to offend the Angarans. She's bubbly and bouncy and she loves learning anything and everything, but her curiosity can also cause resentment in a species not used to being on friendly terms with aliens. 
> 
> Feel free to tell me what you think, or leave ideas and prompts below! <3


End file.
